Don Noel

DON-1 Tokyo, Japan   October 5, 1966.   Mr. Noel is a 1965 Alicia Patterson Fund fellowship award winner on leave from The Hartford Times. Permission to publish this article may be sought from the Managing Editor, The Hartford Times. The photograph on the screen, one of several taken to show Japanese friends the reasons for America’s urban renewal, showed a slum block in Hartford, Connecticut. Less than a month earlier, it had looked terrible. In Japan, suddenly, the tired old tenements looked spacious, solid, and attractive. One would not, of course, seriously compare Tokyo’s urban problems with those of Hartford. But it is worth remembering the vastly different scales, which are used to measure prosperity at home and abroad. Japan is, by every measure applied in Asia, a prosperous economic giant. During a decade’s absence, one kept hearing reports of the new prosperity, seeing photos of new trains, new superhighways, and Olympic stadiums. But returning to gauge personally the progress of ten years, one senses the fragility of this crowded nation’s economic boom. It